A jury in Brunswick, GA has found Kenneth Adkins, a controversial anti-gay pastor who stated that homosexual PULSE massacre victims “got what they deserved” was found guilty on eight charges in the sexual molestation of a teenage girl and boy at his church seven years ago

Adkins was convicted of pressuring two youths he was supposed to me mentoring — to have sexual intercourse first in front of him so he could judge if they were doing it properly to eventually joining in on the acts himself. Last week the jury saw two photographs of Adkins’ penis that he sent his male accuser in 2014. And they saw several electronic messages sent between Adkins and the female.

Five of the charges he’s guilty of relate to the female who denied anything of the sort happened. She lived with Adkins and his wife until about a month after his arrest.

“She’s in his clutches,” said Assistant District Attorney Katie Gropper. “What he has done to that girl is not only criminal, it is deplorable.”

The male told the jury last week that Adkins watched them have sex so many times that he lost track. He said the sex — in the presence of Adkins occurred in the church office, at the beach and in Adkins’ car.

Adkins a former drug addict who reinvented himself in Jacksonville, FL and opened a public relations firm. Many in North Florida saddled up to him in an attempt to curry the black vote. Adkins, for his part, was fairly successful.

He said in multiple phone calls to the Times-Union leading up to his trial that he felt a calling to be a preacher. That’s when he landed in Southeast Georgia. It was here that he made an assortment of enemies for failing to make good on financial promises; for his hard-line Republican stances that tended to put him out of sync with other black people; for basically being inflammatory no matter the subject.

Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry tapped Adkins to be on a panel discussion regarding the possibility of expanding the city’s Human Right Ordinance to include gays, lesbians and transgender people. Adkins told the Times-Union he was picked by multiple pastors to trumpet their anti-gay, anti-expansion stance. He said he was paid for his efforts that included posting lewd and inflamatroy charictures of former Jasonville Mayor Tommy Hazouri

Georgia has strict mandatory minimum sentencing laws and because Adkins has a prior record, there’s a strong chance that he will never be a free man again.

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Will Kohler is a noted LGBT historian, writer, blogger and owner of Back2Stonewall.com. A longtime gay activist, Will fought on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic with ACT-UP and continues fighting today for LGBT acceptance and full equality. Will’s work has been referenced in notable media venues as MSNBC and BBC News, The Washington Post, The Advocate, The Daily Beast, Hollywood Reporter, Raw Story, and The Huffington Post